Calliope

Calliope is a cherub living on post-scratch Earth, long-since abandoned by humanity. Thanks to an obsession with the troll race, Calliope initially implied that she was one, to the extent of dressing up as a "trollsona" named Callie Ohpeee. In truth, she is in fact a lime blood, just not the kind of lime blood found on the troll hemospectrum.

Calliope's handle is uranianUmbra (UU), and her sign is Ophiuchus (☤), the serpent-bearer.Calliope's symbol combines elements of the historically distinct symbols of the caduceus and the Rod of Asclepius, which tend to be conflated in the modern day; the mythological Asclepius was said to have become the constellation of Ophiuchus after his death. Both symbols employ snakes, relating to the serpentine nature of the cherub species - particularly the two intertwined snakes of the caduceus - and wands or scepters, relating to Calliope and Caliborn's weapons; specifically, the caduceus was said to be able to revive the dead and wake the sleepingThe cherubs' birthday and age are never touched upon in the comic; Andrew Hussie has, however, suggested that the patterns established in the comic would indicate they were born on the 11th of November and are 11 "units" old.[1] Cohen Edenfield has further suggested that, thanks to Earth C's larger sun leading to a longer orbital period, 11 Earth C years are equal to 16 modern Earth years, making the cherubs the same age as their human friends.[Calliope is one of the Ancient Greek mythological Muses, who also gives her name to an instrument often associated with carnivals and circuses. Like her brother Caliborn, Calliope also has an eight-letter name starting with the name Cal.

The name first appeared in Hussie's work as the first volume of Whistles, The Starlight Calliope, which touched upon similar themes of dark clownery. "Cal" and "Calliope" are also the names used to represent the masculine and feminine sides of the intersex protagonist in the 2002 novel Middlesex.

Also like Caliborn, Calliope is unique in having a handle with an acronym consisting of just the letters UU; in RNA, this letter represents the chemical uracil, just as the other chemicals in DNA are represented by the letters G, C, A and T. By Calliope's own account, uranianUmbra comes from her attraction to the planet's “UniqUe rotation” HS , which has a “very nice [...] topspin”; in billiards, the spin of a ball is called its "english".[3] There was also another Muse named urania, and uranian came to be an early name for members of homosexual and gender non-conforming subcultures. An Umbra is a shadow, particularly the darkest black part of a shadow; in psychology, a shadow is an unconscious or unacknowledged side of one's own psyche, further hinting at her body-sharing.Her sleeves feature bright red 6-and-9 cufflinks, probably halves of the Cancer sign à la Sign of the Signless, as has been seen on other characters (Aranea Serket and Neophyte Redglare, for instance). When she cosplays as Callie Ohpeee, she additionally wears a white hairpiece, grey face paint and gloves, and a headband with corkscrew-shaped horns that recall her symbol. She's not the only person to have been seen in this exact garb, HS and the outfit resembles the green jacket and red bowtie of Whistles the Clown, a character from Whistles, one of Hussie's earlier works.

She wields a wand or a pistol, similar to Lord English's staff/machine gun (Calliope mentions HS that her brother's favored weapon was a little heavy-handed). She and her "brother" share a Sylladex featuring the Juju Fetch Modus, which operates such that whatever one 'sibling' captchalogues is only retrievable by the other. This is reminiscent of Bughouse, a game related to chess where two chess games are going on simultaneously and the pieces captured are passed to partner playing on the other board to be reentered into play. And as we know, Caliborn likes games and Homestuck likes chess. It also somewhat parallels the existence of The Treasure, the supposed key to defeating Caliborn's future counterpart, as much like their shared modus, once Caliborn uses it, it can only be used again in opposition to him.Calliope has a very polite, cheerful and friendly demeanor, and she tries to be helpful where she can although she is cautious about revealing too much information about herself due to her situation. She seems to be quite creative and is a writer and a talented artist. Similar to how the trolls were based on common internet archetypes, Calliope is based on the MS Paint Adventures fandom; Andrew Hussie has referred to her as the obnoxious fandom avatar character. She spends a large part of her time writing fanfiction and drawing fanart of the other Homestuck characters and self-inserting her trollsona, Callie Ohpeee, whose name is made to fit trolls' 6-letter names (which mirrors Vriska's spidersona in Alterniabound), into the stories. She often seems to think of her friends as characters in a story rather than actual people and seem to live vicariously through her imagined adventures with them. She also has a thing for wild speculations about the story, making up crazy theories HS out of every detail HS , often ending up failing HS miserably HS .

Her self-esteem is quite low and she considers herself ugly, wishing to be more like humans and trolls, and especially feeling jealous of her ability to experience flushed romance (since she, being a cherub, can only have caliginous feelings). Her usually cheery mood can become defeatist and sometimes cranky when faced with problems, especially those relating to Caliborn, but she usually stays quite polite even when in a bad mood.

Calliope generally uses British English. This ties in with her lime blood, since "limey" is a common slang term for British people. In addition, the alternate spelling of some words (e.g. armor; armour, color; colour) lends itself to a higher instance of the letter "u" than in American English. It also ties into her resemblance to Lord "English". It should be noted that she doesn't always use British spelling where it wouldn't result in an extra "u": for instance she uses “maneUver”, “hemo-”, “fUlfill”, “fUlfillment”, “learned”, “program” and “practice” (as a verb), instead of normal British "manoeuvre", "haemo-", "fulfil", "fulfilment", "learnt", "programme" and "practise".